


Last Rest

by Natassia74



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Long Night endgame, Romance, book canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:13:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22316875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natassia74/pseuds/Natassia74
Summary: It should feel sordid to make love here, in an abandoned wildling hovel, mere yards from her sleeping companions.  Dishonourable too, given Jaime is meant to be on watch. But she doesn’t really care.  She wants him, and needs him, and in any case, fucking is the best way to keep warm.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 29
Kudos: 160





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is chapter from a story I have been thinking about for some time. A s4mall group of heroes (whose plots were mainly missing from the show) are sent beyond the Wall to rescue Bran. I don’t know if I will ever finish it, but the first chapter more or less stands alone.

**BRIENNE**

They have to be quiet, very quiet, and so Brienne swallows Jaime’s moan with a kiss as she lifts her knees to pull him deeper inside her.

It should feel sordid to make love here, in an abandoned wildling hovel, mere yards from her sleeping companions. Dishonourable too, given Jaime is meant to be on watch. But she doesn’t really care. She wants him, and needs him, and in any case, fucking _is_ the best way to keep warm.

Brienne has been cold for far too long. They all have. All seven of them, _the sacred seven._ Six fine men and a lumbering beast of a woman; an ill-prepared gaggle of outlaws and misfits, sent beyond the Wall on an impossible quest to rescue a boy only one of them has even met. _And_ _that one left him crippled_. They are the last ones standing _(only just_ ). Freezing to death at the edge of the world. Finding what solace they can in a stranger’s home.

For most of her companions, that solace means sleep, but for Jaime and her, it means fucking.

She can feel him inside her as she arches beneath him, and above her as she rubs her breasts against his linen covered chest. Their shadows flicker in the candle light against the grey, mouldy wall. She plays her fingers under his tunic, along the skin of his back. Large, clumsy fingers, too broad for a harp, or a lute, but able to coax a writhing dance from a lover.

“Seven...” 

He groans it in her ear, a strangled sound, a prayer to gods he doesn’t believe in. Gods even she now doubts. The Seven are silent and lost to her, as with so many other former friends, and everything south of the wall. _I am of the Old Gods now,_ she supposes. _We all are._ Bleeding trees and talking crows and apocalyptic prophecies from a one eyes, three eyed legend who claims to have known her great grandfather. Who says he wants to save the world, and who they have little choice but to believe.

Over a fortnight they’d been trekking on Brynden Rivers’ orders, following his cryptic hints, a squawking crow and Gendry’s half-remembered dreams. Ser Jorah, the only northerner, had kept them alive, but only barely, and with the weather taking a turn for the even worse and a blizzard brewing, things had been looking poorly. They were preparing for death, resigned to it really, until Sandor had literally stumbled over the remains of a poultry coop, and then the half-buried hovel.

“Fucking chickens,” the burned man had sworn, but there had been a rare glee in his voice. ”Frozen fucking chickens.” He’d sworn he’d get every one of them, and so he’d set to shoveling snow with an improvised spade while the rest of the party went to work removing sludge and muck to reveal the soggy walls of a wattle and daub hut. It held a simple hearth and home, barely habitable by the usual standards of most of her pampered southron companions, but near enough to heaven in the desolate north beyond the Wall.

Potentially also a trap, were some Others or their wights to stumble upon them. 

“If they find us, we’ll be trapped in there,” Gendry had said uneasily, gazing into the dark within. 

“If we stay out here they’ll find us anyway, because we’ll be frozen solid and waiting,” Jaime had observed in reply.

Jorah had sighed, a surprising voice of moderation. “It _is_ a risk…” 

But Thoros had shrugged and pushed his way through. “Fuck it, if I’m gonna die, I’d rather do so being able to feel my balls...” Then he’d cast an apologetic glance at Brienne. “Pardon my lady.”

She’d shrugged. “Just get in.” 

They’d all complied, even cautious, surly Gendry. Sandor meanwhile had dug out the coop. “Fucking dinner,” he’d announced from the doorway, holding up bundles of brown crystals that had probably once been a couple of live birds. She’d taken them from him, even as Hyle reached for his flint and steel. 

“For once I agree with Lannister,” the hedge knight had announced, in response to some incredulous looks. “A fire might attract dead things, but we’ll surely join them ourselves without one.”

The promise of roast chicken had won over caution. Brienne had worried the smell would lure not just the dead, but other animals too, yet they had seen naught of any life. No possums or rats, no birds beside the crow, not even so much as a roach or fly. North of the wall had truly become the land of the dead, and they were eating the corpses. 

But eat they did. They shared a dinner, meat, stories, and the remains of a truly awful wine Thoras had seemed to be able to smell beneath a worn mat. Brienne had listened to the tales, and used the firelight to darn worn socks and shirts, a rare moment of peace. Then as the black of truenight fell, they’d set up an order for watch, and then retired to bed, save for Gendry on first watch. Jaime had joined her under the furs, and they’d slept until it was Jaime’s turn to take the watch. He’d waited for Thoros to fall asleep, then ignored his duties and reached for her, with a hand on her breast and a desperate, soft “I need you.”

The Maid of Tarth would never have thought herself capable of accepting such an invitation, but the Maid is long gone, abandoned on the shores of the Trident beneath a waxing crescent moon, back when they could still see it. Brienne the Brave has no such reticence, and welcomed her lover by opening her legs and pulling him on top of her. 

Jaime rocks against her now, cock pulsing inside her. She draws the heat of him through her stomach, her lions, her chest and heart. He is warm, a slither of the golden light.

”You are my sun,” she’d told him once. 

”And you are my guiding star.”

Jaime is breathing hard, his silver-blonde head buried in her shoulder, his clever mouth sucking and licking away his groans as she tightens around him. He moves his hips gently, grinding and teasing with soft, circular movements. Like this they are discrete, less of the rustling of furs and slapping of skin that is like to wake the men from their dreams, but the pleasure builds slowly, an exquisite agony.

The thought comes unbidden: _Jaime is good at this, good_ _at hiding._ Of course, it should be no surprise that he knows how to fuck while barely moving. But she _can’t_ think about that, not now. She won’t. She only wants to think about how good he feels inside her

Jaime runs his hand down her side, fingers leaving a trail of fire in their wake, then moves his hand lower, toward her core. When his fingers find what they are looking for, it’s her turn to gasp. She buries her face in his neck, trusts his rough skin to muffle her moan. Breathless, she inhales him, sweat and leather. Familiar. _Hers._ It brings a flood of memory. _I am his and he is mine._ Words they exchanged on the Quiet Isle, what feels like years ago, but was only months. They had both been wounded then, and with death biting at their heels, the prospect of separation too terrible to bear. But they had escaped death. They had lived, bound to do so together.

Brienne’s fingers find the patch of scarred tissue on Jaime’s back that is a constant reminder of how close he came to dying. Not without guilt, she thinks of how lucky they are, despite everything _._ Despite the shadow that murdered Renly and the murders at the Twins, the mummers and the bearpit, the Whispers and Pennytree and poor old Nimble Dick. Despite the Golden Company and the burning of King’s Landing and Myrcella’s terrible death. Despite even the fall of Winterfell and the falling of winter across Westeros itself. Despite everything, they have their lives, a sliver of hope, and each other, and they have _this, them,_ the pleasure they can bring to each other. For that, at least, she is grateful. 

At her thoughts she feels another, different, rush of warmth. She locks a leg around Jaime to urge him deeper still.

_“Yes, like that,”_ he whispers into her ear. 

_Yes, like that,_ she thinks. _Make me feel you, and forget._ _Make me forget that we are not alone, that we may never be alone again. Forget the cold and the ice, the dead, the Others, Bloodraven and the Stark boy, and whatever awaits us when we find him. Forget that we are, in our own way, the walking dead._

Jaime gives another swivel of his hips, a slight thrust, and it’s almost too much. She can feel him everywhere inside her, warm and familiar. Another thrust, a press and jerk against her, and his mouth opens against the skin of her neck in a silent scream of release. He’s coming and coming, sending a flood of heat inside her. She’s close, and the sounds of his pleasure, her delight at bringing him to it, is enough to send her over the edge too. She lets the shimmering wave wash over her, blurring the dark shapes of the shack. For one, glorious moment, she can believe that they are alone, and warm, but then the tide begins to recede. She clutches at the feeling for as long as she can, until it crumbles in her mind. She clutches jaime too, as he pants and trembles and softens inside her. He is so vulnerable in these moments, trusting in a way neither of them can afford to be otherwise, and she marvels at the effect she can have on him. 

Mere yards away, a man half sits up, muttering and cursing. They both freeze, barely breathing. Were they too noisy in their pleasure? But after a confused few seconds, he falls back to sleep with a mutter and grunt. Jaime meets her gaze and they breathe out in relief, giggle a little despite the circumstances _._ It has been so long since they laughed together. It’s almost as good as the sex.

Brienne smiles softly, and reaches up to runs her hand down Jaime’s neck and back, bringing his head back the crook of her neck. “Jaime, Jaime, Jaime...” It sounds like a prayer of her own. _Half a corpse and half a god,_ she’d thought him once. She remembers that moment well, when he walked through the mist, bald, bandaged and emaciated. He was ill then, weak, but he is almost as skinny again now. She can feel his ribs beneath her hands and their hipbones touch through thin skin. His wealth does him little good here, and since winter fell food has been more precious than any amount of Lannister gold. 

Time passes as they lie, boneless and sated. Their breathing grows regular again, chests rising and falling in a calm unison. Sighing, Jaime begins to push himself up, kissing her collarbone, the ruin of her cheek. His white teeth flash in the dim light as smiles down at her, and his shirt billows around him. It occurs to her that they are both still nearly dressed _._ She can feel her breaches still wrapped around her left leg. She sniggers and Jaime smirks, looking pleased with himself. 

“May my service always please you, my lady,” he whispers, and gives her another gentle kiss, this time on the lips. 

He offers a final thrust of the hips, then slips out of her and rolls off her, careful to stay under the furs. The hut is warmer than the outside - _anything_ is warmer than the outside - but it is still cold enough to raise goosebumps of any exposed flesh. As he settles his arm around her, she listens to the snores and snuffling of her companions. The sounds of men exhausted beyond reason. With the risk of being discovered gone, the sounds are now oddly comforting. Her men, her almost friends. Together they have crossed into the land of the dead, and yet they live, and tonight they have found a kind of peace, albeit at the risk of a deadlier kind of discovery, one that would result in far more than embarrassment. _The end of human life_ , Bloodraven had said.

_But we were dead anyway, Brienne_ rationalises, _out in that storm. Dead from cold, and exhaustion besides._ They were all so tired. She can feel her own eyes drifting closed. It is so good to be warm. She curls her toes, delighted to be able to feel them again. She can feel the sweat on her stomach, too, and Jaime’s seed spilling out of her onto her thighs. 

_Yes,_ she thinks, s _taying here, resting the night, was the right decision._

Jaime reaches for her again, pulling her closer with his stump. She turns to admire his face in the dim firelight. He looks younger, here, the silver in his beard and hair glinting gold again, the lines around his sharp features softened. 

His eyes flicker closed.

She kicks him. “Don’t go to sleep! You’re supposed to be on watch.”

He snorts, and pulls her to him. “Anything finds us in here, we’re dead no matter what. Let’s sleep. No one need be any the wiser.”

“Except anyone who isn’t woken to do a shift.”

“You really think they are going to complain?”

She casts a look over the sleeping forms. _Perhaps not_. She shakes her head, trying to suppress the ever-present guilt and sense of duty, the _what ifs_ that run through her mind. But she isn’t ready to give him up to the cold, not yet. 

“You are such a bad influence.”

He chuckles. She seems to have inspired him. She feels his hand reach past loose laces for her breast, his fingers caress a nipple. She shivers at the feel of his breath against her ear. “Indeed. Corrupting in every way…”

His touch makes her lions tingle again, especially as his fingers move lower. She’s still wet, and his searching fingers slide into her easily. She hums.

“Again, my lady?” he purrs. 

She rolls her eyes, but pulls him to her. 

_Yes,_ she thinks. _Let_ _the others sleep. For tomorrow we may die, but tonight we will live._


	2. The Fall

**The Fall**

When Brienne opens her eyes the fire is little but embers. Jorah is staring into the ashes, a wineskin in his hand. Thoros is ransacking the once neat crates and sacks with casual abandon. 

His carelessness annoys her. The hut had belonged to a woman, of that Brienne was sure. It had been neat and orderly, a clean floor and herbs hanging over the door. She imagines a wildling spear wife, dressed in furs, a weapon in her hands. Does she now walk among the dead too? It's a sad thought, and she ponders it as she watches Thoros empty a crate. It still feels wrong to steal from the person whose home has sheltered them, but the owner is not coming back, and Brienne is learning to be pragmatic. _Like Jaime was with Cleos’ boots_. She smiles at the memory of scraggly Jaime, and how much she had hated him then. How ironic that such a terrible period of her life now makes her feel almost nostalgic. 

Brienne extracts herself from her husband’s arms and pulls on her breaches as subtly as she can. Thoros has the good grace to pretend he doesn’t see what she’s doing, and Jorah probably doesn’t care, lost as he is in the flames. _Does he see King’s Landing burning? Daenerys and her dragons? King Aegon and Queen Arianne crushed beneath the rubble?_

In the calm of morning, the hut seems even smaller, her memories of the previous night more scandalous. Brienne wonders whether they really were quiet, whether her companions had merely pretended to be sleeping. The air is thick with the scent of their sex. She can feel herself flushing red, but she pushes away the embarrassment. What does it matter, when they will all soon be dead?

She creeps across the floor, over the sleeping bodies and ventures out to the frigid early morning air to relieve herself. She has lived cheek to jowl with these men for months, but certain things she still does in private. Pissing standing is but one more way it would be easier to be a man.

Outside, the sky is dark and dour looking, the sun a dull orange blur, barely visible through the almost tangible grayness that had enveloped the world. The trees loom around her, black giants, bowed under the weight of the snow. For a moment, they remind her of the towered walls of Winterfell. _The walls that fell._ She shivers, holds her cloak closer around her. At least the blizzard has passed, leaving a crisp, biting iciness in its wake. The temperature is an incentive to make quick work of her needs. 

When she pulls down her breaches her thighs are sticky, and she uses a little snow to clean them, trembling and gasping at the icy touch. Still no blood. It worries her in a vague way. The night before they left the Shadow Tower she and Jaime had both drank too much, and her had taken her by a dying fire, finishing inside her with desperate moan. They have yet to speak of it, but Brienne has counted the days. _I could be with child._ The words echo in her head. Then, _h_ _e spilled in me last night too_. _Twice._ She touches her stomach. She finds she likes the idea of having a little bit of him in her, despite the risk, the knowledge that any sprout that takes root within her is like doomed to die in her without ever seeing the sun. 

She shakes her head. _Sentimental folly._ She has none of the other supposed signs of pregnancy, and starvation was as like to stop her moonblood as Jaime’s seed taking root. 

She finishes her business quickly and heads back inside. 

Thoros has found another wineskin and is imbibing. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he grins.

“It’s been frozen. Tastes like horse piss, but wine is wine.”

As if _that_ was an explanation. 

He offers her some but she shakes her head. “Did you find anything _useful_?”

“Wine _is_ useful.” 

Still, he hands her a bunch of withered, soggy carrots and sad looking defrosted turnips. 

She shrugs. “Better than nothing.” 

As the men rise, Brienne collects the discarded chicken bones. They’ve been picked clean, but she puts them in a pot to boil. 

Jaime comes to sit beside her and strokes her back as she cooks. It’s possessive and not at all subtle, and although comforting it grates on her, particularly as she knows Hyle is watching. _Men._ A part of her knows that it can be dangerous to be alone with so many of them, especially desperate ones. There is always the fear that they will take what they aren't given. But these ones, these men, she trusts with her life, although perhaps not yet with Jaime’s. 

When she is finished they break their fast with the chicken broth and vegetables, a meager meal but a vast improvement on every other this past moon. Again she thanks the wildling woman and her careful winter preparation. 

Meal finished, the party gathers their things and ventures outside. Ravens circle and caw overhead. _Just as_ _they circled the_ _head-studded walls of Dragonstone_ , she remembers, shuddering.

But Dragonstone was not the worst of it. There had been no heads left to mount on spikes at Kings Landing, only ashes.

She shakes her head to clear away the lingering horror. 

Gendry - _Lord Baratheon,_ she reminds herself - is standing quietly, staring into the ghostly trees. The boy rouses other memories in her, memories of Renly, but the lancing pain she once felt in his presence is now as dull as the hidden sun, and in any case, temperamentally the two men could not be more different. 

“My Lord?” Jorah asks, coming to stand beside him.

The boy frowns for a moment, considering, and then nods north, toward the cawing crows. “This way.” 

They follow his lead, a foresight born of his dragon dreams,as he calls them. A gift of prophecy from his Targaryan ancestors _._ Brienne is not fond of prophecies. Prophecies have killed two princesses, a queen, a fool, a would-be king, and tens of thousands of smallfolk. But she has little option but to trust in these ones, and so far Gendry has not led them astray. 

Gendry trudges into the snow, leaving a trail of footprints behind him. Brienne glances at Jaime, and then heaves her pack higher on her back and together they fall into step behind him, close but not quite touching. Layers of leather make that impossible anyway. 

They walk, and the leagues pass in a blur of dark trees and white snow. Colour is what she misses. The blue oceans and green mountains of Tarth, the red roofs of King’s Landing, even the yellow fields of the devastated Crownlands. Everything here is black and grey and white, the life drained from it.

_Much like Lady Catelyn_.

The thought comes unbidden, perhaps prompted by Jaime's retelling of the tale around the fire the night before. The glorified version, when in truth, there had been nothing glorious about it. 

_I lied to her. Lied to her, and killed her._

They had thought themselves dead when given a trial by combat. Jaime was handless, she had a broken arm, Hyle could barely stand, and Pod was but a boy. Then Thoros had suggested the Trial of Seven. Demanded it, really. The red priest did not know the history, and when Lem had leered and taunted him that there were no true knights to be found in the cave, Brienne had lied and said they didn’t need any.

“The Andals believed that if the seven champions fought on each side, the gods, being thus honored, would be more like to take a hand and see that a just result was achieved. The legends speak of champions, not knights. I will be Ser Jaime’s champion.”

Perhaps it wasn’t a lie, but a fine point of translation - what was a knight to an ancient Andal anyway? Surely they didn’t exist? Only she didn’t truly believe that. She had lied and Thoros had lied and Jaime had lied, too, although didn’t everyone expect that? And Lady Stoneheart, who had agreed to a trial of seven because she had thought they would be but two, had simmered with rage as Jaime's words swung Gendry and others to them as well. 

"My blade is poor, but my words are sharp. I will mock them, distract them," Tom O'Sevens had said. "And then I will sing an extraordinary tale, and take much of the credit.”

He had vouched for Jaime saving Edmure’s life. Others followed his lead, until Long Jeyne made seven. 

“I know what you did for Willow.” She’d said, “I can fight with naught but a frypan, but I am quick. I will stay out of the way, and make up your seven.”

She did, and finally when they had enough, and the fight had begun. A melee as brutal as any other, played out before an audience of broken men and wayward women and their dead queen. They had won, but there was nothing holy about it. It had been bloody and vicious, a force of arms, not of Gods, and in the end they had cheated, and they can won.

_Lived._

She reaches for Jaime’s hand. Her fingers are stiff under the layers of wool and leather, and she can barely feel him when she squeezes. He casts her a surprised look, and then a smirk, with enough lasciviousness to remind her of the previous night, to inspire a wave of warmth.

Hyle snorts in disgust behind them. He’s probably rolling his eyes in disgust. Yet despite everything, he’s stayed, long after she’d lost Tarth, and he’d lost any prospect of her. 

“You’ve got so much excess righteousness, a little rubbed off on me,” he’d joked, when he’d decided to follow her north. “Besides, I can’t be a hedge knight when there are no lords left to serve, and no hedges left to sleep under either.”

He’d made it sound like self-interest, as he always did, but Brienne knows a part of Hyle, much like Jaime, longs only to be a hero. Probably a famous one. _I’m so sorry Hyle_. _A hero you may be, but you’ll die an unsung one._

The column of walkers stops behind Gendry, who is standing still, watching. 

“What do you see, boy?” Sandor grunts. 

Gendry lets his gaze fall on a distant cliffscape. “In my dream there were two paths. One appeared as a great open mouth, the other a spiny back and slashing claws. I think one is up there,” he gazes toward a cliff, rising behind the trees. “The other way is down, through the forest.”

Beside her, Jaime stiffens. Even fitted with a hook, his hand will play havoc with any climb, and they all know it. 

“I choose the low way,” Brienne says quietly, saving him the embarrassment. 

No one objects, not even Hyle. ”Why not? Both sound equally charming,” he observes dryly. 

Jorah signals his agreement. 

Gendry frowns, unsure, then shrugs. “This way then.” He leads them off leads them off through more trees. 

Jaime offers her a half nod of thanks, gratitude tinged with shame. 

They trundle through more trees, then down an icy bank, their feet cracking the thin top shell of the snow and sinking deep. Brienne’s legs burn. Eventually the ground becomes rockier, the trees sparser and in places bent. A loose, hidden rock shifts under Brienne’s foot and she nearly stumbles. Jaime catches her, his hand on her arm, black leathers coated in white. 

_He was dressed in white the first time he kissed me,_ she remembers. There had been snow in his hair, his beard, and his hand on her ruined cheek had been cold and damp. _But_ _I didn't mind as he’d pulled me to him._ Their lips had been clumsy, stiff from cold. Until they weren’t...

Another caw brings her back again. In the distance, above the trees, the black birds call to them still.

A sudden, bitter breeze breaks through her furs, burning into her bones. She shudders. 

“Just over that rise…” She hears Gendry call from the front of the line, pulling her fully back. 

Sandor ignores him, instead gives voice to their fears. “Did it just get fucking colder?” 

“It did,” Thoros answers cautiously. “And quickly.” 

“Of course it did,” Jaime mutters. “We wouldn’t want things to get easy.” 

_Uneasy._ That is how she feels. And scared. They all know what sudden cold means. Her hand goes to Oathkeeper’s hilt, and she sees the rest of the party reaching for their weapons as well, instinctively starting to move into a circle. She draws her blade, but her grip is clumsy, her fingers numb even beneath the layers of wool and leather. 

Suddenly, Jorah stumbles and yells, and Brienne's vision blurs as a cloud rises before her eyes. A wight, emerging in a fountain of white snow and muck. She can see more shapes. Three, four, half a dozen, until there are as many more dead than living. Somewhere, Sandor swears. 

Instinct takes over. She retreats a step, braces Oathkeeper then lunges and swings, relief flooding her as the blade cuts through the worn leather and dead flesh of the creature before her. There is no blood splatter, no wet sound of metal on flesh, just a dry crunch. Spindly tangles of dried, unused guts spill from it’s open stomach but it doesn’t so much as flinch with pain.

Somewhere to her left, she catches a flash of Thoros’ flaming blade. There are so many figures between them. _Too_ _many of them._

Something else is coming too, she can feel it. The _Other._

Brienne steps back to Jaime’s side and they fall into their usual pattern of unspoken cooperation, blocking blows from swords and hands alike, swinging and thrusting in turn. The wights are untrained and clumsy, but they are many, and they refuse to die. Minutes, hours, time blurs. It’s Winterfell again, but this time they need to move, not hold.

“Gendry!” Mormont’s voice cuts across the ice, his tone commanding. “Where to? We need to go there, now!”

“This way!” she hears Gendry’s reply, then a _thack_ as he slams his axe into a wight. “Follow me!”

It takes her a moment to find him in the white, but then she sees the bulky young lord taking off up a slight, rocky rise, his massive hammer clearing a path in front of him. She grabs Jaime, then barges through the raking hands, slashing and swinging wildly to keep any blades at bay. Behind her, a man cries out in pain. _Jorah?_ She pauses, but Jaime shoves her forward. In the distance, the birds are now shrieking.

Brienne follows the path of dead wights left by Gendry, up the rise. It’s stepper than it looks. As they run, the ground beneath them becomes harder, more rocky, covered in hard ice. She slips, and almost trips, saves herself, then grabs Jaime to stop him falling. Behind her, Sandor chants curses. She can hear Thoros’ blazing sword swishing.

“Here!” 

It’s Gendry’s voice. He is at the top of the rise, and pulls up short of what looks like the edge of something. _Not far, not far,_ she tells herself. Then she watches as Gendry falls backwards, disappearing below the ridge.

Brienne doesn’t think. She squeezes Jaime’s arm, a quick farewell, and she is off, leaping across the rocks, as sure footed as one of the mountain goats of her homeland. Ice flies from beneath her boots. She can hear Jaime calling her name, Hyle too, but she ignores them. Gendry is too valuable to die. She scrambles up the icy embankment, her hands finding holds on the tips of otherwise snow covered rocks. 

When she reaches the ridge, hauls herself over it, to finds a wight on top of Gendry, clawing and feral. Another pulls at his leg. She plunges Oathkeeper into the first one’s back, severing it’s spinal cord, and nearly dissecting it at the hips. It still claws at its prey, but Gendry kicks it off with his free leg and reaches for his hammer. Brienne leans down, gets a grip on the broken creature’s rotten leather jerkin, pivots, and throws it toward the gully. It tumbles away from her, and then stops, mid motion, colliding with something unseen, before collapsing into the grass.

She stares at the crumpled form for a moment, uncomprehending. 

“A barrier…” gasps Gendry. “They can’t get through.”

“Can we?” Brienne wonders. There’s only one way to find out. She lunges toward the space herself, covers it easily. There is no impediment to her, other than a sudden, dramatic fall, and she pulls up just in time, teetering on the edge of a sinkhole, the depths disguised in black. _Seven, that looks deep._

“Are you injured?” Hyle comes to stand beside her, with Gendry, both of them panting heavily. 

Gendry shakes his head, “No, but we have to get down there”. He points back at the gully, the mass making its way toward them. “They can’t follow.”

Hyle takes a cautious step toward the edge and peers over himself. “Seven help us.” 

At first, Brienne is inclined to agree. The walls appear sheer in places. But when she looks more closely, she can see that there are ridges, and what appears to be a winding ledge. The walls are steep but not sheer. It’s not too different to the quarries on Tarth. 

“There is a way…” she says tentatively. 

She points, and the men turn their attention to the ridge. She can hear the others scrambling up behind them, the wights no doubt on their tails. She turns to look back. At the foot of the ridge is the Other, riding a hideous monster made of legs and fang. When it sees them, it kicks its ghostly mount into a horrid parody of a canter.

Fear bites at her chest. ”Move!” she calls. 

“Down it is,” says Hyle. He looks at Gendry, “you first.”

“But Lady Brie…” Gendry begins.

“...Is a better fighter than you and less important besides. If you die, we all do. Get down the bloody hole.”

The boy does as he is told.

“You next…” Hyle says. His brown eyes are fearful, but soft.

She shakes her head. “I’m the faster climber. You go.”

It is no time for a pissing contest, and Hyle doesn’t argue, just turns to climb. Brienne heads to the edge of the ridge and offers her hand to Jorah, pulling him up. His grip is sticky with blood, and his face is pale. It is too gloomy to see where he is injured.

“Can you climb?”

He nods.

“I’ll help him,” Sandor grunts. “Saved my life.”

She’ll have to hear that story another day. The white walker is at the base of the ridge, weaving his way through the wights. Thoros and Jaime cover the last of the distance, Thoros setting wights alight as they close.

She reaches her hand out and hauls Jaime up. He is breathing hard, and she gently touches his face in a silent question. He shakes his head, irritated. “I’m fine, just old…” his eyes fall on the sinkhole, “...fucking hells.” 

“Get started, I…”

But her words are lost as Thoros’ cry pierces the air. They both turn to see the red priest stumbling, an icy spear in his back, the white walker and his strange, glistening spider on his heels. Instinctively, Brienne pushes Jaime toward the hole and turns back to Thoros. 

"Go!"

She lunges for the ridge. The red priest is close, and she reaches down to grab him and pull him up. They have seconds, at best. Thoros coughs blood, red spittle flying from his mouth. There is a trail of it behind him. So much of it.

_He’s gone,_ she thinks, but she says, “come on, they can’t enter the hole.”

Thoros raises his left hand, and she hauls him up, onto the ridge. He groans as she does, and then lies there, on his stomach, panting, the spear shaft wobbling above him. What _now?_ She can’t get them both down into the pit, three of them with Jaime, and they both know it. 

Thoros raises his head and grins at her, his white teeth stained red. "I shall soon see the light again, my Lady. Feel the fire on my skin..."

What little warmth is left in her drains away. “Thoros , no… ” 

He shakes his head, shoves her away. He is still clutching the blade, and he drives the point into the show to push himself up. His grin is manic.

“I’ll burn my body, just in case…”

“No...”

She sees him in the cave in the Riverlands, standing beside Jaime and Hyle and her, calling for justice. She owes him her life, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t try to hold onto his. She reaches for him, tries to hold him. He resists. He is surprisingly strong.

"Go, lady Brienne."

”No, no, no...!”

Then there are arms around her. Strong arms, pulling her back. "Come, come Brienne."

_Jaime._

She kicks at the ice, but her feet can’t find purchase as Jaime drags her. 

"Lead me from the darkness, O my Lord..." Thoros staggers back as he chants, and his sword erupts in flame again. She can feel its heat, and for a moment she feels warm. There is steaming blood beneath his feet. 

"R'hllor, you are the light in my eyes, the fire in my heart..."

Two long, slender limbs, glistening despite the gloom, mount the ridge. Then two more. Long, terrible fangs glisten. _It's here._

Thoros touches the flame to his arm, and his chest, and he begins to glow. "Fill our hearts with fire, so we may walk your shining path..."

He burns, and as he does he turns, and runs toward the spider. His scream is agony and elation. 

Brienne feels she should watch, give Thoros of Myr the respect he deserves, not let him die alone.

"Don't let him die in vain," Jaime hisses in her ear. 

He heaves her toward the edge of the sinkhole as her nostrils fill with the scent of burning flesh. 

Thoros' scream ends with a crunch. 

At the edge of the sinkhole Brienne can see the rest of the party, scrambling down below. She helps Jaime down as the spider fully mounts the lip of the ridge, more ghostly white legs, forequarters now tinged black. It is almost beautiful, it’s master certainly so. A creature of ice, cold and hard. For a moment, she is frozen. The Other meets her eyes, its gaze like a blade, slicing through her tether to this world, and Brienne feels she is falling. 

Then, it smiles. 

She throws herself over the edge. 

_It cannot pass_ , she tells herself, as she slides down the rough-hewn surface. Fear courses through her as she drops into the sinkhole, feet thankfully finding the narrow ledge. 

Jaime is beside her, his stump reaching for her shoulder. "Too close, wife."

She nods. Agreed.

Then the world begins to shake. She grabs at the wall, and at Jaime. Ice and snow lift from the ground, pebbles too, and rocks, the debris filling the air, whirling like rippling water, forming a twister. 

“Get down…” Brienne screams, but her words are lost in the storm. She can’t see the others, can only hope they are safe. 

_It doesn't need to join us, it only needs to send the snow..._

The grit tears at her skin, batters the lids of her eyes, her nose. The walls shake beneath her grasp, the shale like rock splintering in her fingers. Jaime grips the wall unsteadily, his good hand also grasping for purchase. The ledge beneath their feet is too narrow, and it too begins to crumble. 

_We will fall_. 

_We must._

She reaches for her Jaime, and when she finds him she wraps her arms around him. She feels his come to tighten around her.

"I love you..." she whispers, although she doubts her can hear. She can feel the heat of his breath against her own ear, and clings to that warmth.

And then they step off the ledge, to slide into the abyss. 

...

  
  



End file.
